1. Industrial Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an IC card reader/writer and, more particularly, to an IC card reader/writer into which an IC card can be easily inserted and having high reliability in an electrical connection of contact points with the IC card.
2. Description of the Prior Art
IC card reader/writers are used for writing data in IC cards or reading the same from the IC cards. Conventionally, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 61-16386 (A) for example, it is usually such IC card reader/writer that associated contact points of the IC card reader/writer are vertically displaced by making use of a force in the inserting direction of the IC card, to thereby bring the contact points into contact with terminals of the IC card.
Further, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 60-15885, in a portable IC card reader/writer, for the purpose of simplifying its mechanism, employed was a construction in which an IC card is loaded on a lid mounted rotatably around a point at its one end and the contact points of the IC card reader/writer are brought into contact with terminals of the IC card by closing the lid.
However, the IC card reader/writer in which the contact points thereof are vertically displaced by making use of the force in the inserting direction of the IC card to thereby bring the contact points of the IC card reader/writer into contact with the terminals of the IC card, has such defects that its mechanism is large-scaled and a cost for manufacturing the device is increased, that the displacing mechanism of the contact points is complicated and this complicated mechanism often causes trouble, and that a contact failure sometimes occurs because the contact points of the IC card reader/writer will not slide across contact points of the IC card so that there is no clearing effect at the contact points between them.
In the IC card reader/writer having such construction that the IC card is loaded on the lid rotatably mounted around the point at its one end and that the contact points of the IC card reader/writer are brought into contact with the terminals of the IC card by closing the lid, there appear further disadvantages such that it is inconvenient to handle the IC card reader/writer because the two-step operations of inserting or loading the IC card and closing the lid are necessary and that a manner of operating the IC card reader/writer is different from that of a magnetic card conventionally and widely used for an automatic deposit machine and so on.